


Relative

by themantlingdark



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Thor (Movies)
Genre: Fluff, M/M, PWP, Sibling Incest, post-IW (which I still haven't seen) fix it fic I guess???, this is the fic equivalent of an /r/Showerthoughts post
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-10
Updated: 2019-03-10
Packaged: 2019-11-15 02:30:22
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,252
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18064853
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/themantlingdark/pseuds/themantlingdark
Summary: Loki lives.





	Relative

Pepper had confessed to a paper cut. Before even Jarvis could send ointment and a bandage, Thor had risen from the sofa, bent over her where she sat, and with a few fluid curlings of his fingers, cast a glowing cage of gold around the wound.

To her it looked like cat’s cradle played with light, and felt like the warmth of incandescent bulbs.

Strange sat rapt, trying to decipher and memorize magic he’d never before seen.

Stark looked on and silently lamented, not for the first time, that he hadn’t been born a god.

“Better?” Thor asked, looking up for Pepper’s approval, which everyone in the room simultaneously enjoyed for its humility and found absurd due to their own now-insurmountable, entirely justified senses of inferiority and unworthiness.

“Perfect,” she smiled, and leaned in to kiss his cheek.

 

The cushions had just groaned out a cottony _oof_ at the weight of Thor having settled on them when Jarvis’s voice came quietly over the speaker closest to the couch warning Tony and Pepper that they should make their way to the stairs in the hall. Thor and Strange were advised to go out and investigate the cloaked horseman who had appeared on the roof astride a mount with no wings.

 

Thor would not have understood Stark’s Olivier Martinez reference even if he had still been in earshot. As it was, he had leapt over the back of the sofa and was already out the door by the time Tony remembered the actor’s name. Strange was scrambling after Thor, hurried forward by his cloak, doing it no favors with his flailing.

When Strange finally made it to Thor’s side, he fell straight into a hole that appeared in the concrete beneath him. Tony and Pepper hadn’t finished swearing under their breaths at the doctor’s sudden disappearance when he reappeared, midair, in front of them and dropped six feet to land lengthwise on the sofa.

“How long have I been gone?” Stephen asked, frowning at his watch after he looked out onto the roof and found things exactly as he’d left them.

“Three seconds, tops,” Tony said.

“It felt like thirty minutes.” He narrowed his eyes, sighed, then smiled. “I think I had that coming. And I think we’re safe to join them.”

 

Stark had his eyes fixed on the sky as they moved toward the door. A rich indigo above, hemmed with that dim rainbow the dusk made of the horizon. Venus was twinkling at him with her silent, steadfast urgency. No gathering clouds. No distant thunder. Only a light breeze that smelled of the tops of budding trees despite the grit of the city that surrounded them.

 

As they came up behind Thor, the horseman swung his right leg over the steed’s neck and slid down its left side, landing with a clap of leather-soled boots on concrete and enough weight that every other pair of feet standing on the surface felt their impact.

 

“Who are you?” Thor asked. Loki pushed the hood of his riding cloak back and smoothed his hair before he risked a look at his brother’s face. The left eye wet. The right one still gone and, for some reason, looking freshly wounded. Lips and nostrils quivering like a candle flame in a draft. “I watched my brother die. _Again_.”

“Reality is relative,” Loki offered.

“Thanos had the stones.”

“And when he put his hand around my throat, so did I. He made a necklace of the gems for me. Hubris can, on occasion, be a thing of beauty,” Loki smiled. He saw his own expression flicker briefly across his brother’s lips, which were pulled thin and tight, reigning in hope, but rapidly losing their grip on what had always been the most wilful horse in Thor’s stable. “He had all the raw materials in all the realms, but not the vision to wield them. To have magic is one thing. To know it--or _be_ it--” here Loki lowered his head, bowing gently to his brother, “is entirely another. So while you saw me dying, I saw me in a cavern within a vein of bifrost on Alfheim, with my son at my side.” Loki stroked Sleipnir’s neck and all eyes but Thor’s turned to the horse and remembered a myth and wondered how much truth there was to it.

“You left me again. When I needed you.”

“I know,” Loki winced and choked, nodding, then took a slow breath through his nose as his teeth trapped his lips to stop their trembling. “But the realms needed you ruthless. With nothing left to lose. You trusted my rage once. I trusted yours. If there’s one thing I’ve learned in all my long years, brother, it’s how to piss you off.”

Thor laughed wetly and all but fell into his brother. He seemed to be hooked by his chin over Loki’s left shoulder, otherwise hanging limp down his front, steadied by the thin arms around his ribs. Loki’s face disappeared as his hair fell forward when he pressed his nose into Thor’s neck.

 

Potts, Stark, and Strange, who had never been acknowledged to begin with, took the brothers’ sealed embrace as a sort of dismissal and went back inside to hover at the bar. Pepper scrolled through the list of every accessible wine and liquor in the tower, searching for the oldest worthwhile spirit, hoping to have something with substance, and perhaps familiarity, to offer the odd pair of gods who would likely be long term guests.

“Critically endangered,” she murmured.

Tony looked up from the bourbon he was emptying into her tumbler.

“Yes,” Strange nodded. “Thor is the last of his kind.”

“Loki?” Tony asked. Strange shook his head.

“Different species.”

“Same culture, though.”

“True. That, at least, is something.”

 

Loki seemed to usher Thor in, though not with any actual effort. Their strides were matched, slow and easy, trajectories aligned. Loki’s hand floated at the small of Thor’s back and lingered there after they’d bellied up to the bar. Strange saw pale fingers press Thor’s spine lightly in farewell before dropping to hang by Loki’s leg.

“What can I get you?” Stark asked.

“Anything woody for me, water back,” Loki replied, finally looking away from Thor’s face, meeting Tony’s eye for the first time that evening. The pale blue of Loki’s irises had warmed and darkened in the low artificial light. There was cheer about them. A smile gathered and raised their outer corners. But there was an absence in the gaze itself, which mechanically took in what it saw and dismissed it while the mind behind it turned all its attention to the body at its left. “And, for Thor, whatever fruit he likes best, pureed with ice to thicken it, and filled with as much gold dust as the fluid can keep suspended.”

“That’ll be mangoes, and then you’ll have to give me a minute on the gold. Jarvis?”

“It is on its way, sir.”

“Thank you,” Stark said, and looked at Thor, who had ducked his head slightly and gone a fetching shade of pink in the cheeks. “Dietary requirement?”

Thor nodded.

“How did you normally get it?”

“Plates, pots, pans, goblets, forks, foil on sweets,” Thor said.

“Would this have anything to do with why you’re so heavy?” Tony asked, and Thor nodded again.

“It’s in his bones,” Loki explained. “But he needs it for his immune system too. Should probably pop a gold orb in that empty socket. That way you’d always have some on you in emergencies.”

“Fitting that a part of you should look like a star,” Strange murmured, thinking aloud as he pictured it.

Loki smiled his agreement at this, having had the same thought himself. Then his face smoothed and fell as he wondered how, in so short a time, Strange had come to see his brother the same way he did.

“What did you do?” Loki asked.

“Had to fire up the forge at Nidavellir,” Thor said. His words were fast, casual, and quiet, said in the time it took to shrug his right shoulder. Loki’s whitening lips told everyone that they’d just heard an understatement, and that to call it an understatement was likely another understatement.

“Oh, is that all?” Loki said.

Pepper heard the ice in it. She had that feeling you got when you were at a friend’s house as a child and said friend got in trouble with their mother. That feeling that you were sinking because the ground beneath your feet was falling away.

“No,” Thor sighed. The sound was nearly a sob. No whine in it, but maybe dread, and definitely exhaustion.

“As if that wasn’t bad enough,” Loki breathed. “Of course not. What else?”

“I just,” Thor spread his fingers, as though the slightness of the gesture could make the thing he’d done seem smaller. “Made a little… singularity and--”

“A ‘little’ _black hole_ ,” Loki said flatly. Setting his drink down with a ringing knock of crystal on granite.

“ _Singularity_ ,” Thor continued, “and swallowed Thanos up with it... and then let it evaporate.”

“The flash from that would have been...” Loki trailed off, shaking his head in disbelief.

“I did wrap it in storm clouds first to dim it. Didn’t want to blind half the realm.”

“Lucky you didn’t blind yourself. Was it an eye patch that burned up and left your socket so charred?”

“No, it was an eye,” Thor admitted. “I had an implant, but it wasn’t made of stern enough stuff to survive the blast. Left a bit of a mess. Sticky. But the wound is still fresh enough that I can’t scrub the mess off without making the socket scream.”

Loki licked the pad of his thumb and gently rubbed at the dark hole in Thor’s face before dropping his hand with a disapproving huff.

“Swallowed up Thanos, gauntlet and all?” Loki asked.

“No, I cut that off him with an ax first,” Thor admitted, and Loki made an almost indecently pleased noise at that news. It reminded Strange, Stark, and Potts that the gods had seen more war than any person on Earth, and that to call war hell was to soften it significantly. To wield an ax with near surgical precision in close combat spoke of a familiarity with horror that mercifully few human beings could fathom. Even after performing thousands of surgeries, Strange’s stomach had reeled inside him when Thor had casually peeled the gauntlet off Thanos’s severed hand and tossed the former to him as though nothing out of the ordinary had just occurred.

“Speaking of the gauntlet,” Strange said, turning to take his own look into Loki’s cheerfully absent eyes. “I couldn’t find you anywhere with it.”

“I’m touched you tried,” Loki said, smiling as if remembering a joke no one else was in on.

“For Thor’s sake, I did,” Strange nodded. “And when I couldn’t find you, he wrenched open the gates of Valhalla to ask your mom if you were in there.”

A soft “oh” gusted from Loki’s open mouth and he stared at Thor, who was looking safely past him at Doctor Strange.

“You can’t see anything that’s in bifrost,” Thor explained. “It’s neither here nor there. Not even Heimdall could…” Loki squeezed Thor’s shoulder when Thor went silent and looked away.

 

A windy _thunk_ in a pneumatic tube told Tony that the gold dust had arrived. He emptied a bottle of it into a mango smoothie and watched while Loki monitored Thor’s drinking like a parent making sure a child didn’t spit out any medicine.

 

“I’ve never seen a stable here,” Thor said, turning to look out the windows at Sleipnir’s dark silhouette. “Is there some place we might find one in the city?”

“We can improvise for the time being. And I might know someone,” Tony held his hand up like a wall and pointed at Pepper through the palm, “who has one of her own a hundred miles north of here. That horse phase kids go through was not just a phase with her.”

“Well then, here’s to good taste,” Loki grinned, and clinked his glass against hers while Thor grinned around a gape and went bright red as he widened his eyes at the back of his brother’s head. The expression confirmed his friends’ suspicions about how Sleipnir had come into being.  

 

They spent the evening talking horses and sipping 1964 Karuizawa. Loki and Pepper carried the conversation while Thor stared at Loki the way Tony stared at Pepper and Strange silently observed the similarity.

 

Strange’s cloak offered to do the heavy lifting when bales of straw and hay arrived by freight elevator. Buckets of grains and a tub of water followed. Tony suggested the living room would be a better makeshift barn than the open rooftop, where satellites and drones would easily spot an eight-legged horse come morning.

Thor and Loki laid down straw and loosened hay, smiling as they worked, cheered by the familiar scents of feed and bedding.

Pepper fetched Sleipnir from the balcony and said she’d take the couch to keep him company.

Seeing that Loki was very pleased with his son’s babysitter, Thor suggested it was time for sleep.

 

 

“I can’t believe you’ve got someone else’s melted eyeball stuck in your socket,” Loki tsked. “ _Almost_ can’t believe,” he amended, gently dabbing at the blackened goo with a damp cloth. When he looked at the white cotton, none of the filth had transferred onto it. He perched sideways on Thor’s right leg and placed his palm over the mess on Thor’s face. Green light shone through his skin and soon foul smoke flowed up through the gaps between his fingers.

Thor thanked Jarvis when he heard the ventilation in his room kick into a higher gear to clear the fug.

“Would it kill you to learn some wound cleaning spells?” Loki griped, wiping the soot from his hand until the washcloth was the color of molasses and his palm was pale again.

“I’m never in one place long enough to clean anything up.”

“Well, you’re always in your body. You could at least learn to keep that little bit tidy. And for mercy’s sake, shave that beard. It looks like it's been through a meat grinder. And fur makes your face look grubby regardless.”

“So you've always said.”

“So you’ve never listened.”

Loki’s riding cloak was still swaying behind him, curving around his long legs as he turned. Pretty, but too married to travel in Thor’s mind to be truly attractive.

“How long have you been wearing whatever’s really on under that illusion?”

Loki narrowed his eyes and seemed to stare through the floor, then raised his eyebrows at himself.

“Since Sakaar. Feels longer. But it’s not even half the longest I’ve ever gone without a change. Why? Do I smell rotten?”

“No, not at all. Just,” Thor shook his head, “curious.”

“I do feel stale though,” Loki admitted. “Shabby.”

“You don’t look it.”

“That’s because I’m lying.”

“I know.”

Loki released his magic, letting it dissolve in wisps of green that revealed scuffed boots, faded black leggings worn pale at the knees, and a frayed tunic with torn laces that meant only the lower third of the breast could be tied shut. His eyes were sunken and all his hollows had deepened, darkening their shadows.

“No time to pack food and water,” Thor said softly.

“No time,” Loki agreed. “Hardly enough time to even think. I was lucky anything came into my head at all.”

“You’ve always been quick on your feet.”

“That was something worse than quick. Cutting things too close even for my comfort. Didn’t get a chance to leave myself a way to keep an eye on you,” Loki shook his head and laughed a little.

“What?” Thor asked, sagging in his chair and smiling.

“An eye,” Loki said, nodding his head in the direction of Thor’s empty socket. Thor threw a cushion at him. Loki caught it and hugged it to his chest. “I’m serious. I kept thinking of Svartalfheim… and every battle, really. How you always had at least one eye on my back. More often both of them. When we were facing weaker forces, there was no real danger. I enjoyed the company and cooperation and the friendly competition. Like a dance. But with what we’ve been up against of late,” Loki gave his brother a tight smile, “I’ve been a liability as often as not.”

“You’re all I’ve got,” Thor said.

Loki tossed the cushion back to Thor and he stuffed it into place on the sofa before climbing to his feet and heading to the fridge.

“You have friends who love you,” Loki reminded. “ _Realms_ that probably worship you properly now.”

“ _They_ have _me_.”

“Ah. So is their love unrequited then?” Loki asked, feigning shock by opening his face.

“No. I love them like I love a robin at the window: completely, for the few seconds I’m allowed.”

Thor opened the ice box and pulled out the foil-wrapped leftovers of a capon.

“So it’s simply a question of quantity?” Loki said. “You’ve had more time with me.”

Thor closed his eyes above a silent, smiling laugh and started slicing bread.

“If they just had longer lifespans,” Loki continued, “it would all even out in the end.”

Thor had his lips pursed shut to flatten a grin the way their mother would have done if Loki had been digging as deep for flattery from her. His eyes were beginning to water with the effort of sealing in his mirth and his face was darkening with the pent up pressure.

“If they had a heaven, you’d rend its gates to peek inside and make sure they were all safely stowed.”

“Surely,” Thor nodded, frowning to seem serious after the words had come out somewhere between a sputter and a titter. He tried to draw a deep, calming breath, but felt his ribs shaking with laughter that threatened to carry him off on its shoulders. It knocked the air from his lungs faster than he could take it in. His arm was almost vibrating as he began to carve the bird. “Quantity, not quality,” Thor nodded solemnly.

“What crossed your mind when you didn’t find me in Valhalla?” Loki asked. “Feel free to say ‘murder.’ It’s entirely fair.”

Thor laughed softly and shook his head at himself, looking, to Loki’s eyes, insincerely rueful.

“I did _try_ not to let myself hope.”

“And how did that go?” Loki asked.

“About as well as it always does.”

“Pighead.”

Thor nodded at this and began spreading a fluffy white gelatinous substance onto a slice of bread before piling it with leafy greens, tomatoes, and thick slices of thigh meat.

“What in the realms is the white stuff?” Loki asked, wrinkling his nose and narrowing his eyes.

“Mayonnaise. Trust me. It tastes better than it looks.”

Loki looked skeptical until he bit into the sandwich, at which point he made a pleased moan, scooped a heap of mayonnaise onto his plate, and started dipping his dinner into it before every bite.

“It’s mostly fat,” Thor chirped.

“Yes, I can taste as much. That’s why it’s delicious. And gods know I need it. I look a draugr.”

“You are a bit skimpy.”

“You’re missing an eye,” Loki reminded, around a mouthful of sandwich, and Thor laughed and pinched the back of his brother’s arm as he left to fill the bath.

 

When Loki came into the bathroom, Thor was standing at a mirror he seemed not to need, shaving off his beard. His hand trailed the foamy razor through a basin of steaming water until the froth and whiskers had melted away, then rose to drag the clean blade fluidly across his face, moving on memory. Loki was surprised Thor’s hands still knew the path after so long without any practice. His beard had been patchy when it had first come in, which had lent it a mangy look the first few times Thor had tried to grow it out. Shaving had been a sometimes twice daily occurrence in those days. But that had been six centuries ago.

 

Thor heard the gurgle and slosh of water as his brother sank into the bath behind him. He smiled to himself and silently counted down from thirty. When he got to _one_ he heard a tired curse behind him.

“Need to piss?” Thor asked, grinning at his brother’s reflection in the mirror.

“Every bloody time. Like clockwork. As soon as I’m in the tub, my idiot bladder wakes up and ruins everything,” Loki grumbled, rising and sending sheets of water cascading down his skin.

“Wind?”

“Please.”

Thor sent a long gust of hot air across the room to dry his brother off and listened to the gentle slapping of wet soles on the marble as Loki hurried to the toilet.

 

If you had told Thor ten years ago that the soft, relieved sigh and the ringing drill of piss would be parts of Loki that he would miss, he would have said “I know.” There were some things that couldn’t sneak up on you once you’d lived a thousand years. He had always known that, should he ever lose his brother, there would be next to nothing that he wouldn’t long for until his dying day. He knew he’d miss Loki’s bony legs kicking him in his sleep as they shared cramped tents on narrow mountain passes. Miss the funny, sickly-sweet scent of Loki’s sneezes first thing in the morning, with their drool-pooled-on-the-pillow stink. Miss the stray strands of black hair that coiled around his bare toes in their shared bath. Miss the Loki’s-ass-shaped dent in the mattress and the crumbs of bread and cheese in the sheets because Loki’s favorite place to read was sitting propped up against the headboard of Thor’s bed, often while Thor was still in it. Miss the month-long fights, the screaming, the crying, the cursing, and the silent treatments. Miss the little burps that snuck out of him and fizzed through his nose when he clamped his lips shut tight to try to stop them--and miss the miffed frown and curt huff that followed at that failure.

 

Thor ran his hand over his face and throat to check for any missed whiskers, swiped away the little line of stubble still hiding below his jaw, and went to join his brother in the bath.

It was deep enough that they could both comfortably sit up and have the water up to their necks. Long enough that they could sit opposite each other with their legs stretched out in front of them without their feet touching. But they sat face to face in the center, cross-legged, with their knees butted together.

 

“How did you know to come back now?” Thor asked. “And please tell me you didn’t try it any sooner.” He pictured Loki leaving the bifrost too early and blowing away as a cloud of ash.

Loki shook his head and Thor let out a held breath, relieved that there hadn’t been yet another way he’d lost his brother.

“Sleipnir could smell it. A change in the air. I’d grown too used to it. Something awful. Like a fresh battlefield under the first rain. Putrid death. Had his hackles up for weeks. And then, the other day, he woke me up and nudged me and butted me until we were out of the cave and all was well.”

Thor nodded and leaned forward to squeeze Loki’s ankles. He left his hands there, fingers lightly flexing, sometimes shifting from side to side, stroking bones and tendons, feeling the lean muscle, measuring how much of it had gone missing.

Loki was staring at Thor’s face when Thor finally looked up.

“Should I get another patch?” Thor asked, assuming the scored crater in his face was what held his brother’s attention.

“Why? You have nothing to hide. If you do anything, I think the gold prosthetic would be best. But you look,” Loki smiled and gave a disbelieving shake of his head, “good doesn't begin to describe it. Even that haircut is delicious with your bare face to help it.”

The tip of Thor’s nose set the water rippling when he dropped his face to hide his pleasure. He squeezed Loki’s ankles again and felt a finger hook his chin, leading it up until his nose brushed his brother’s.

“Thor,” Loki whispered, and Thor nodded and leaned in to cover Loki’s open mouth with soft nips and presses of his lips while Loki’s breath slowly left him and warmed Thor’s face. Loki pressed their foreheads together and they rested like an archway, each half holding the other up.

Thor was nearly asleep when he felt the water shift against his front. Then the backs of Loki’s knuckles bumped his chest and slid up until Loki’s fingers were curling up over his shoulders and sliding together, palming either side of his neck. Loki nudged the side of Thor’s nose with his own, like a horse nuzzling, and Thor grinned and nudged him back. He saw Loki’s right eyelid, with its thready veins of pink, glossy creases, and fan of satin lashes. Not closed, but lowered, looking down at his lips. He gave Loki’s mouth a soft peck that worked like flint on steel. Loki pressed into the kiss until Thor’s mouth opened under his and let him in, to lick, sob, and suck as his fingers flexed and slid on the wet skin of Thor’s neck, tugging him closer.

Thor was kissing his way along his brother’s jaw, pressing his mouth into the pulsing hollow where it met the throat, when he felt as much as heard a breathy laugh that was only half humor. The remainder sounded something like defeat.

“A thousand years, and then, finally, in a Midgardian _toilet_...”

“ _Bathroom_ ,” Thor said, softening it.

“I can see the toilet from here.”

Thor rubbed Loki’s ankles and kissed his cheek.

“Then shall we finish washing up and head to bed?”

Loki nodded and leaned back until he went under, soaking his hair so that he could shampoo weeks’ worth of strange air and stranger days from the brittle, battered strands.

 

While Thor leaned over the mattress, turning down blankets and fluffing up pillows, Loki dragged his fingers through the scattered beads of water that dotted his brother’s back, letting them burst and streak Thor’s skin, making little paths of cool while Thor’s ribs and spine sent their rhythms stuttering through his arm.

Thor straightened, stared at the bed a moment, and made a high, soft “ _umm”_ before circling the room, rifling through closets, drawers, and cupboards, throwing every blanket and pillow he could find onto the bed. Loki laughed at this, but when Thor looked back over his shoulder he found his brother arranging all the bedding into the inviting bowl of a nest.

They tumbled into it with happy groans, loving the way the shape of it rolled them toward each other. They rested in a jumble of stacked knees and awkwardly folded arms, slowly breathing, letting go of a little more of the tension in their muscles every time they exhaled, until their eyes were closed and their breaths were puffing warm against each other’s lips in long, slow gusts.

Loki’s foot jerked as he started to slip in a dream. It nudged them both awake and set Thor grinning.

“What?” Loki asked.

“I’ve missed that.”

“It’s been years since we shared a bed.”

“I know,” Thor said, and watched his brother’s eyelids give a sustained blink, telling him Loki had marked the time and missed it too.

“Curl up with me for a while, like we did on Niflheim,” Loki murmured, turning around and then shuffling backward, butting himself up against Thor’s front until Thor slid one arm under his neck and wrapped the other around his waist.

Thor was lying on his right side, realizing for the first time he was now more comfortable this way. The loss of his right eye had made his left side dominant. His empty socket was sinking into the pillows behind his brother’s head, but his left eye could see the pink of Loki’s ear and the hair spilling down behind it, blacker with the bathwater and the low artificial light. He kissed the back of Loki’s head and felt Loki’s belly flex slightly beneath his palm as he made a low, happy grunt. Loki’s sleepy breathing led his brother under with him in less than a minute.

 

Their minds stumbled briefly at waking to find the lights on in the bedroom and a dark sky out the window. A short, minor panic swept through their nerves, which were not at their sharpest in the blurring mist left behind by dreams. They wondered whether they’d neglected something more important than putting out the lights. Thor felt the faint uptick in his brother’s heartbeat as it drummed against his palm, then the dilation of the span between each beat as Loki realized there was nowhere else to be and nothing he was obliged to worry about. He sagged back into his brother’s warmth and let his body flex and quicken with the motions of Thor’s hand, which was rubbing the spot below his sternum, rising up toward his head and down toward his toes in slowly increasing strokes, making Loki’s back arch at the top and bottom of each pass. He could feel Thor’s cock swelling against his ass, sliding across the sweat that had gathered where their bodies were pressed together.

Loki tipped his head back when Thor’s fingers brushed the knot of his throat. He whined when they dug into the fur at his crotch, ruffling it with a dry scuffing sound, sending a salty musk up into the air that made Thor’s cock press into the meat of Loki’s ass without any effort from Thor’s hips. Loki was burning everywhere. He wanted to dive into deep, cold water. A wet that would almost feel dry compared to this, devoid of the contrasts of sweat, skin, air, and cotton.

Thor sealed his lips around the side of Loki’s neck just as he closed his fist around Loki’s cock. Loki felt wrung and compressed all at once as the two sensations blurred together and then came into focus again. Looped by the pull of something outside himself that had two points but one source. Extended by the way the warmth of Thor’s body bled into his own.

Thor stroked Loki’s front in another long pass, fingers undulating over the ribs astride his sternum, flowing up his long neck and closing lightly around his throat, brushing it softly in farewell before they descended again to give the same, weightless caresses to his balls and cock.

The position made it feel to Loki as if Thor’s arm was his own, but the light, teasing, wandering touches were unmistakably the work of his frustrating contradiction of a brother. Loki was flickering, redrawing his borders whenever Thor traced his jaw, erasing them again with every tug to his prick.

Thor slid his mouth up to nibble Loki’s ear while he gave the head of his brother’s cock a slow, twisting stroke. Loki cried out when his prick bounced free in the cool air after Thor’s palm slid up and over it. He curled his hips in, chasing the pleasure of Thor’s hand, then whined when he felt it settle on his belly again. He craned his neck to try to reach Thor’s face, but could barely meet Thor’s eye out of the corner of his own and could only stretch his jaw wide enough to drag the edge of his mouth against his brother’s chin.

There was a slippery scramble of sweaty limbs when Loki turned around. He threw his leg over Thor’s thigh and hauled him in tight with the back of his calf, butting their hips together. He had Thor’s jaw caught between his hands, the skin smooth and hot.

“There you are,” Loki whispered, stroking Thor’s cheeks. He could smell himself on Thor’s face. The bitter keratin of hair and the oily sweetness of the scalp had been brushed onto Thor’s features as they’d nuzzled the back of his head.

The clarity of kissing Thor settled and centered Loki, landing him solidly within himself. The mouth that was meeting his could not be his own. The face across from his was the one he wanted to see rather than the one he had. Breath from broader lungs was tickling his lips as thick arms encircled him to reel him further in.

Thor’s tongue filled his mouth and twined around his own tongue, coaxing it out past his teeth so that Thor could suck and stroke it, all but swallowing it with a pull that nearly ached. It distracted Loki from Thor’s hand, which was gliding down his back, aligning with his spine, and slipping into the cleft of his ass to trace and pet his hole with the pad of one finger.

Loki moaned into Thor’s mouth and tipped his head back, panting.

“Thor, I’m--” Loki gasped as Thor lightly scratched his opening, swirling his way around the little knot with the back edge of his fingernail, satisfying an urge Loki hadn’t realized he’d had. “Oh god, you won’t have to do more than say the word, I’m so--”

“Brother,” Thor whispered, and kissed him on the cheek, and Loki’s mouth opened wide and silent as his eyes rolled back in his head.

Not the word Loki had expected. Infinitely better. He should have seen it coming.

Thor felt semen spray hot and sticky onto his stomach in descending waves. He watched Loki’s features slacken with every pulse from his cock and every breath until Loki’s face was smooth and his heartbeat was slow and steady.

Thor tugged a blanket over them to keep the chill away as the sweat dried on their skin.

 

 

 

The day was bright when Loki woke. He found Thor’s eye waiting for him, mirroring the sky, maybe magnifying it, glowing blue and beaming at him.

“Oh, I left you al--” Loki began, but Thor stopped his mouth with warm, open kisses that, though they were softer, somehow felt larger than those that had come before. The stillness of their bodies and the lingering calm of sleep set a blank canvas around their lips. “Mm. My breath can only be awful,” Loki winced, untangling their mouths.

Thor rolled his eye and shook his head--not in in disagreement but in disapproval--before leaning in to coax his brother back into lazy, melting kisses that went on for over an hour.

Loki used his growling stomach as an excuse to escape, not to the kitchen but to the bathroom, where he scrubbed his teeth and washed his face.

“May I borrow some clothes?” Loki asked, leaning against the door frame as he dabbed his chin dry. “Preferably something soft.”

“Help yourself. All the clothes here are soft. Midgardians have fragile skin.”

“Who are you texting?” Loki asked, slipping into jeans and a t-shirt that smelled like laundry soap underlaid with the tart citrus notes of Thor’s sweat.

“Pepper.”

“Ah. Did her charge behave himself last night?”

Thor held up his phone to show Loki the photo she had sent. She was stretched out on the straw with Sleipnir’s head pillowed on her lap.

“Well,” Loki sighed, “she has a friend for life.”

Thor hummed his approval and toddled off to make them a nine egg omelet that was one third cheese and a stack of buttered toast so tall it threatened to tip over if you so much as looked at it.

 

Loki stared out the window down onto the city streets. They should have been teeming with worshipers for miles around. That they were flowing with their typical burden of traffic was a testament to Midgardian stupidity, which Loki would never forgive, and to Thor's humility, which he would never fathom.

 

“What would you like?” Loki asked, hearing his brother’s footsteps behind him, turning to find Thor’s arms midair, reaching for him, on their way to catching him by the waist.

“I'm still full from breakfast,” Thor said, pulling Loki into a hug. “We should probably have fruits and vegetables at some point, though.”

“I don’t mean food, I mean for yourself.”

“Oh.” Thor nodded once, leaning back but not entirely letting go, rubbing Loki's arms and smiling at him. From the few inches between them, Loki could see the spread of Thor’s lips and the way the upper one curled under as he grinned, revealing sharp teeth that should have held menace but spoke instead of unbowed boyish mirth. “Kisses,” Thor decided, leaning in and having them until his brother remembered himself and caught his face in cool fingers to halt them.

“No, not right this second. I mean... in the grand scheme of things.”

“Oh,” Thor laughed. “Sorry. Umm... You. Alive and well. Happy. If that can’t be here--or can’t be anywhere with me--then... I’d like to visit you wherever it is--only at your pleasure. Like for you to send word every now and again to tell me how you've been.”

“Thor, be a little greedy.”

“I thought I was.”

“You’re bordering on ascetic. Isn't there anything else?”

“Nothing comes to mind.”

Skimpy, Thor had said. And Loki felt it. Scant reward for a god who'd saved the realms. Loki supposed the realms themselves were the reward. But Thor had asked for him and for kisses.

“Kisses,” Loki repeated.

Thor traced the seams on Loki's borrowed t-shirt.

“Kisses,” Thor nodded. “And the things that tend to accompany them.”

“But don't you have some wider vision? Things you'd like to see.”

“Things I'd like to see,” Thor repeated at a murmur, then nodded and led his brother to the bed where he grabbed him and tipped backwards onto the mattress so that Loki landed on top of him.

“Ta-da,” Thor sang, eye shutting with his grin.

“I think my view is better than yours.”

“Was that a double entente about my eye?”

“No, but now I wish it had been. Damn.”

They giggled together briefly and then Thor watched his brother’s face fold up and tighten into a frown.

“What are you pouting about?”

It’s just… you deserve… _more_.”

“I’m glad you feel that way,” Thor said, waggling his eyebrows and rubbing Loki’s butt.

“You set a low bar.”

“Are you really going to pretend you disapprove while your erection is punching me in the hip?”

“Yes.”

They both snorted and jostled each other, then slumped together, laughing.

 

The bed was in an awkward state for what Thor wanted, so he shooed Loki off and set it to rights, straightening the blankets and piling the surplus pillows by the headboard to hold his neck and shoulders up.

“Redecorating?” Loki asked, when Thor laid towels across the bed.

“Mmhmm.”

“Toilet chic?”

“ _Bathroom_.”

“I doubt it’ll catch on.”

“I’ll bet it’s pretty popular already--under these circumstances, anyway.”

“And what might these circumstances be?” Loki asked, briefly hiding his smile beneath his t-shirt as he pulled it over his head, emerging with a face that was wide-eyed innocence.

“You’ll have to wait and see,” Thor said.

“No hints?” Loki pouted, shimmying out of his jeans.

Thor grabbed a bottle from the nightstand and climbed onto the bed with it. He settled on his back in the center of the mattress with his knees bent, then let them fall open slowly.

“None.”

“Can you be trusted?” Loki whispered, biting his lip and blinking fast in a flutter of lashes.

“Only one way to find out.”

“Norns help me,” Loki pleaded, crawling up the bed and sinking onto his brother’s breast.

“Fool,” Thor growled, and clamped his arms and legs tight around Loki, crumbling their composure and leaving them to vibrate against each other for a minute before they calmed with long sighs.

Thor nipped at Loki’s mouth. Kissed the bend where the shoulder swept up into the neck. Swayed slightly from side to side, rocking the too slim and always slightly cool body above him. Heard a pleased hum just before his face was dotted with half a dozen firm, lingering kisses.

“What do you need?” Loki asked, leaning back to look Thor in the face. Loki’s cheeks and chest were flushed already. Thor could see the color spreading across his brother’s neck, bridging the two islands of red.

“Just the oil in the bottle. And kisses.”

Thor felt a tiny laugh puff out of Loki’s nose just before a temporary parting-kiss was pressed to his mouth.

“I meant to drag this out,” Loki said, painting oil onto his own cock with slow, firm strokes. “Tease you a bit. See if I could get you to beg.”

“You could--easily, but it seems to me you’d just be punishing yourself.”

“My thoughts exactly,” Loki nodded, brushing oil onto Thor’s opening. “Why should I make myself wait?”

“I can’t think of a reason.”

“Ready?” Loki asked, and saw Thor smile and nod.

Loki was fairly certain he could manage it without looking, but didn’t see why he should sacrifice the sight. He watched his cock compress, bunching up against Thor’s entrance until enough pressure had built that it slipped in with a fluid rush, wrapping him in warmth and silk that left him feeling melted. He leaned back an inch and the drag of soft, slick heat across his cock let him feel the contours of his own body again. He paused to let the edges of himself dissolve into his brother and couldn’t decide which sensation he liked better. It occurred to him he wasn’t obliged to decide, so he let himself have both, sliding back and forth and then, when he was completely enveloped, going still.

Thor’s cock bobbed after a thrust and Loki remembered himself, pouring oil onto it and stroking it. Three passes of his hand to each swing of his hips, no longer pausing at the end. Thor was watching him, smiling. Flushed from ribs to cheeks. Reaching to brush his fingers across Loki’s breast and belly, or holding Loki’s left hand where it held the back of his right thigh.

Loki heard Thor hold his breath and watched his balls draw up. Felt Thor tightening inside. He curled forward and craned his neck, aligning his mouth with the trajectory of Thor’s cock as best he could, catching the spurts of come in his mouth and, when they’d stopped, straightening for a few quick thrusts before he let himself go and collapsed atop his brother, panting and hearing the blood rush through his ears.

“You taste like the air by the sea at home,” Loki murmured.

“Is that what it is?”

“That’s it exactly. It’s uncanny.”

“I never could put my finger on it.”

“Surely not for lack of trying.”

Thor grinned his agreement

“I can still get the head in my mouth,” Thor confessed.

“You lucky little fuck. I never could mine--and not for lack of trying.”

Thor giggled and Loki slipped out of him with the pressure from the laughter. They both quietly yelped at the tickle and the sliding dribble of mess, but didn’t bother moving.

 

“We should check on Sleipnir,” Thor said, shaking himself awake half an hour later.

“Bath first. We smell like a barn. I wouldn’t want anyone to think it was him.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Written over the course of four afternoons in one of those I-Have-To-Write-Something-Right-Now-Or-I-Might-Never-Write-Again panics. My brain is still scrambled eggs, so it's complete shit, but it's practice, so I guess that's something :/
> 
> Yes, the title is a bad joke. No, I'm not sorry.


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